Breaking Ground

by William Andrews

  A little before ten she took a call from Mike. “The state guys say they’ve done what they can to the site,” he told her. “They’ll remove the tapes this morning, so you can tell Luke Dyer it’s okay to start digging.”

  “That’s great! Did they find … ?”

  “The missing shovel? No. And I’ve been through the woods with a fine-tooth comb, but then I never expected it to be there anyway. It’ll turn up.”

  “So you think it was the murder weapon?”

  “Did I say I thought so?”

  “No, but you’re looking for it.”

  “Let’s just say I’d be happy to find the shovel. Meantime, you can tell Luke to get started.”

  “Thanks, Mike. And I’m not pushing or anything, but did you have a chance to check at the inn?”

  “At the inn? Oh, your alibi. Sorry. Yeah, Brian Handley says you were there giving him a hard time. So I’m satisfied.”

  “I’m not a suspect?”

  “Never said you were, but you know I have to tie up all the loose ends.”

  Of course she knew he hadn’t suspected her, but Julie was relieved to hear that her alibi was confirmed. And relieved to hear him joke about her giving Brian Handley a hard time. She called Luke Dyer’s office and left a message. Mrs. Detweiller came to the office door to remind Julie that it was time for her tour. She headed to Holder House, the building farthest down Main Street and the one containing the gift shop, as well as the historical displays in the large room where she did the welcome and orientation.

  Over the past year, Julie had developed labels to describe tour groups. “Polyester” meant senior citizens, the women in pantsuits and the men in golf shirts, almost always on bus tours of northern New England and looking for a rest stop where the bathrooms were clean and the tour content inoffensive. “Backward caps” were the teenagers herded by middle- and high-school teachers, happy to be out of class but rarely interested in the history of Ryland. “Cuties” referred to the elementary students who, though as much prisoners as the teenagers, showed genuine excitement in how people lived in older times. “Buffs” were the self-styled experts on local history, those who couldn’t resist correcting or amplifying Julie’s comments. The “Triple A” crowd consisted of travelers—retirees during the fall, families in the summer—who were passing through Ryland or spending a weekend there and had read the description of the museum in the Maine edition of the AAA guide. They were the most mixed: gangling teenagers clearly embarrassed to be with their parents or grandparents, little children entranced by history, bored husbands accompanying their wives with a passionate interest in painted furniture, slow-moving seniors with time on their hands, the occasional buff who used to live in town before retiring to Florida and eager to point out that the old pair of ice skates on display looked exactly like the ones he had lost at the pond thirty years ago. Because of the challenge they represented—the need they created for Julie to range widely and find interesting things to say to people with such varied interests, or lack of interests—she actually liked them best.

  Today’s ten o’clock group was definitely “Triple A” material: several grandmothers, two middle-aged couples, one young couple with an unruly four-year-old, and two boys with their caps reversed whose age Julie placed at thirteen or fourteen. Tickets for the tours were sold in the society’s gift shop at the front of Holder House, an example of shameless commerce Julie strongly supported since it meant the gathering group had time to examine possible purchases in the shop while they waited for the tour to begin. She assembled them there and led them to the orientation room, where glass displays and wall hangings illustrated periods of Ryland’s past. After welcoming them, Julie followed her custom of asking where they were from—all, in this case, were what Julie, adopting local custom, had already come to label “from away”—not from Maine. She gave an overview of the society, previewed what they would see in each building, and did an abbreviated town history. She liked to conclude the orientation by asking if anyone had a special interest so she could make a point of satisfying it as they proceeded through the buildings. One of the grandmothers, not unexpectedly, mentioned quilts, and one of the middle-aged men, also not unexpectedly, said “guns.” Julie knew exactly how she would address their interests. But when one of the adolescents asked to see the murder site, Julie was momentarily flustered.

  “You know,” he prodded, “where the lady was killed. Can we see that?” The boy was quickly muffled by his embarrassed father, but Julie realized she was going to have to have a line of patter to address the issue.

  “We did have a very unfortunate accident here on Tuesday,” she said, “but the area is being excavated this morning to begin the construction of our new building. I’ll point it out when we go over to the crafts shed.”

  “Accident?” she heard the boy say to his peer. “They chopped her up, that’s what I heard.” Julie was happy to see the father step forward again and place a strong arm around the two boys and speak sternly to them.

  Despite the inauspicious beginning, the tour was a success, something Julie gauged by the way she held people’s attention during the tour and by the number and quality of questions both during and afterwards. In this case, what was planned as a fifty-minute tour extended to over an hour and a quarter, and at the end the group was generous in its thanks. The two adolescents had been held in check by the father; the middle-aged man’s interest in guns and the grandmother’s in quilts had been satisfied; and the four-year-old had actually stopped running and babbling when Julie had shown him the collection of antique toys—his surprise that there were no Tonkas amused her.

  Back in her office, Julie learned from Mrs. Detweiller that Luke Dyer had stopped by to say the work was under way and that Henry had called. She phoned Henry at once.

  “I figured I should get ahold of you since you know I was talking to Mike Barlow at the picnic yesterday,” the attorney said.

  “Sorry I interrupted.”

  “No problem. Mike and I talked last night. Some interesting things have developed. You have time to talk now?”

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe you’ve heard some of this already, but I had a long talk with Steven Swanson yesterday and got some things clarified. So let me try to sort this out. Two parts: one, the half-million of Mary Ellen’s pledge; two, Mary Ellen’s will. On the first, like I said a couple of times, there’s no question about the funds being available. The question is getting the probate judge to release them prior to settlement of the estate. It’s not a slam-dunk, but with Steven’s cooperation I’m pretty sure we can persuade the court that Mary Ellen intended to give the historical society the money right away, and that the society relied on that expectation in breaking ground, et cetera, et cetera. The point is the money will be there, and I don’t want you to be concerned about that.”

  “I’m not. I know you can’t talk about her estate, but I trust you that there’s enough.”

  “I’m not talking about the estate now—just the cash. That’s what the society needs, and it’ll be there. See, Mary Ellen agreed to sell the land out at Birch Brook to Frank Nilsson and Luke Dyer—mostly Frank, but Luke’s got a piece of it, in addition to doing the construction. Mary Ellen signed the P and S in early June.”

  “P and S?”

  “Sorry. Purchase and sale agreement. Anyway, she was never really comfortable about it.”

  “About selling the land, or about the price?”

  “Both. Dan, Mary Ellen’s husband, bought that land from Paul Dyer, Luke’s dad, just a couple of years before he died.”

  “Who—Swanson or Dyer?” Julie interrupted.

  “Both, as a matter of fact. Paul Dyer died about a year after he sold, and Dan Swanson died maybe a year after that. Anyway, Dan really loved that piece of land—great views, river access. I think Mary Ellen got to feeling guilty about selling it, or maybe she figured she could do better, but she asked me to put a clause in the P and S that gave her some time to think it
over. Frank was naturally eager to get it settled since he and Luke had to line up financing for the construction. I think he recognized that if he didn’t allow the back-out clause Mary Ellen wouldn’t sign, and he’d have to delay. He probably figured she’d just let the date ride and the deal would go through. Which is just what happened. And so the money will be available very shortly. We’ll go to closing next Monday.”

  “But who sells? Steven, I guess.”

  “No, I’m the executor of the estate, and I have full power to close the deal since the back-out date passed.”

  “When was that?” Julie asked.

  “Today, as a matter of fact. The clause gave Mary Ellen thirty calendar days to withdraw without penalty, and that’s July fifth.”

  Julie was idly doodling on the yellow pad in front of her as the attorney talked, but when she looked down she saw she had written “July 5th” and underlined it. “Hold on a second, Henry. You mean that if Mary Ellen hadn’t been killed on Tuesday she could have backed out of the land deal?”

  “Had until today to do so, like I said.”

  Julie couldn’t believe that Henry wouldn’t see the significance of this fact, but she decided to let him continue, assuming that his part-two item would cover it. “Okay. Go ahead—you said the second thing was the will.”

  “Right. I need to ask you a question about that. Frankly, I’ve been sort of putting this off because I wasn’t sure about what my duty was—I have a dual duty on this, to the estate and to the historical society. But I talked to Steven about it, and he agrees I need to ask you just to be sure.” Henry hesitated, and Julie heard him take and swallow a sip of something. “Julie,” he resumed, “did Mary Ellen mention anything to you about changing her will to benefit the Ryland Historical Society?”

  “I never talked to her about her will, just about the gift, and the fact that she wanted me to know she would pay it off this summer.”

  “Which makes it sound to me like she intended to go through with the land sale,” Henry said.

  “You mean she didn’t have enough money otherwise?”

  Henry laughed heartily. “Don’t mean that at all. Mary Ellen had huge assets, but like most good Yankees she kept them in stocks and bonds and land. Not exactly liquid, especially with the market the way it is. She could have raised the half-million in cash easily, but she wasn’t the type to sell into a bad market if she could hold on to get more gains. The thing is that the land deal provided cash so she wouldn’t have to liquidate anything. That definitely appealed to Mary Ellen. But like I was saying, if she told you she was going to have the money shortly, then I’m sure she wasn’t going to opt out of the sale. And that’s what Steven thinks, too. But back to the will. The reason I asked you if Mary Ellen had talked to you about it is that Steven told me she had mentioned it to him.”

  “When?” Julie asked.

  “Interesting timing. Over breakfast Tuesday morning, apparently for the first time. She told him she was thinking of changing her will to leave one-third of the estate to the historical society.”

  “Wow!” was all Julie could say.

  “If you knew the size of the estate, Julie, you’d be saying double wow. But let me be clear about this—she didn’t change the will, and didn’t even mention the idea to me, so I don’t think the society can pursue this.”

  “What do you mean by that, Henry?”

  “Just that if she had told you she was going to make the change and then didn’t, because she didn’t have time, the society might have grounds for contesting the will.”

  “We wouldn’t do that!”

  “Well, not with me as solicitor! That’s when I’d have a plain and visible conflict. But I had to advise Steven of the possibility, and that’s why I needed to know if Mary Ellen had talked to you.”

  “Maybe that’s what Steven thought she was going to do on Tuesday morning. He told Mike Barlow his mother was planning to see me before the groundbreaking, but she hadn’t mentioned that to me. But Steven might have thought so, especially if Mary Ellen just brought up the idea of a change over breakfast that morning.”

  “I suppose. Anyway, it’s obvious Steven would not have been happy if she had.”

  “No, I guess not,” Julie said slowly, pondering the implications. “But did she tell Steven why she was going to do that? Could she have decided to back out of the land deal and then change her will so we got the money that way?”

  “That’s certainly a reasonable inference,” LaBelle said.

  “But because she was killed she couldn’t back out?” Julie practically yelled over the phone.

  “Well, obviously. But I doubt we can conclude she knew she was going to die and therefore couldn’t exercise the cancellation option.”

  “No, but she had Tuesday and Wednesday and today to cancel. Or so she thought.”

  “Sure. I see what you mean. But I don’t think that’s the issue here. The idea of changing the will had more to do with Steven.”

  “How so?”

  There was a long pause, and Julie heard the sip and swallow again at Henry’s end. Finally he continued. “Look, this is where my legal duty gets blurry, but I talked to Steven about this, and he said I should go ahead and tell you. He wants everything out front.”

  “Okay, but I’ll keep it to myself if you want me to.”

  “That would be best. Here’s the thing: Mary Ellen told Steven and Elizabeth—or Steven says she did; I can only repeat what he told me—that she was going to change her will to leave one-third of the estate to the historical society if at the time of her death Steven had no heir.”

  “No heir?” Julie repeated. “What century is this?”

  “Means what it says: Steven and Elizabeth have no children, and Mary Ellen never missed a chance to criticize them for that. God, Julie, I’ve got a pack of kids, and on lots of days I’d be happy to loan or sell a couple to Mary Ellen or anyone else who was interested, but obviously Mary Ellen wanted grandchildren.”

  “And Steven?”

  “Who knows? Didn’t want to, couldn’t, whatever. And, from what I know of Elizabeth, she’s not exactly maternal. But look, this isn’t for me to say, and it’s not the point. The point is that to act properly here, I needed to know that Mary Ellen didn’t tell you about her idea.”

  “No, absolutely not.”

  “Good; please keep that to yourself then. Now I can file her will as written and not have any concern that it didn’t express her intentions. And Steven will cooperate on getting the money for the building before the estate’s settled. He’s going to inherit quite a bit, and that prospect tends to put people in a good mood, even though they have to wait a lot longer than they think for everything to settle.”

  “How long, Mike?”

  “Oh, in Maine you can usually get it done in a year. Actually, getting the half-million right away will ease things since that will resolve one of the principal claims. So Steven and Elizabeth will probably be happy to wait, considering what they can expect.”

  “I know I shouldn’t ask, but curiosity is one of the traits required by my job description.”

  “And discretion is one of mine, Julie,” Henry said firmly before she could get to the obvious question. “I’ve told you more than enough already. When the will’s probated, it’ll be a matter of public record. For now, just be assured it’s a big, big estate. It’s fair to say Steven and Elizabeth are going to be rich.”

  CHAPTER 12

  When the conversation with Henry ended, Julie sat quietly at her desk, intrigued, trying to puzzle out everything they’d just talked about. As a child, Julie could spend hours on a rainy day fitting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. She loved the features in the Saturday newspaper that invited her to find the monkey hidden in the picture, or presented stories that required her to create the correct ending. In school, she couldn’t wait for assignments that took her to the library to track down obscure facts. So becoming a historian wasn’t exactly a surprising move. Not that
it prepared her to solve a murder so much as it honed her sense of putting together pieces to explain a picture. In fact, Julie was strongly visual and tended to convert abstract and verbal problems to pictures. Making doodles and notes on a pad was her preferred method of working through a problem. So she took out a yellow pad from her desk and began to jot her thoughts on it.

  The first thought she had was how incredibly naive Henry seemed, especially for a lawyer. That was because Julie saw two huge matters that Henry didn’t—or, if he did, he at least wasn’t letting on that he did. One was that because Mary Ellen died on the third of July, she could not exercise her right to cancel the land sale to Nilsson and Dyer. Lucky them! The second was that if Mary Ellen hadn’t died on the third of July, Steven and Elizabeth might have lost one-third of a very large estate. So lucky them, too! But not so lucky Mary Ellen.

  On her pad Julie wrote “Steven” and put a large dollar sign beside it. She did the same with “Elizabeth.” Then she bracketed the two names and put a question mark beside the bracket. Motive seemed obvious enough for Mary Ellen’s son and his wife, singly or together. Of course Steven merely had to wait to get his, but Henry’s news meant Steven risked losing a third of it. Still, Julie found it hard to imagine a son killing his mother, especially so brutally, and in her conversation with Steven after the concert she had gotten the distinct impression that he was truly mourning Mary Ellen’s death. Although she didn’t know him well, Julie couldn’t avoid the conclusion that Steven was a nice guy but somewhat weak, and that wasn’t exactly surprising since his mother was so domineering.